Great films have moments in them that make you think, “This is something special.”

There is a moment in the opening of Saving Private Ryan during the Normandy Beach invasion scene where the audience realizes it’s in for level of violence that it’s not prepared for. Likewise there is a moment in Donnie Yen’s film Ip Man where the normally peaceful grandmaster mows down a group of Japanese black belt karate students in front of his captors, with the intent to maim. Then there is the famous hammer scene in Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy where a brutal hallway fight involving knives, sticks, and the aforementioned hammer turns into an altogether different art form not unsimilar to dance.… Read the rest

Gareth Evans is one of the best martial arts directors working today. His work on The Raid (2011) alone is enough to win him such praise. A bloody, brutal, skull crushing, bone-snapping, 101 minute joyride, The Raid feels like it features 90 minutes of hand-to-hand combat. Its run time makes the 3:41 fight scene with no cuts in Tony Jaa’s The Protector seem fleeting and the pace of its brutality makes Jet Li’s Unleashed feel restrained. And it’s plot was so good that Karl Urban’s Dredd ripped it off.

Not that there was any real plot outside of setup: a twenty man SWAT team in Jakarta raids a tenement ruled by a drug lord.… Read the rest